Logging

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

I was poking around for a logging framework today. I wanted something very easy to use. Anything too difficult and people would just revert to Debug.WriteLine and MessageBox debugging pretty quickly. The idea here is to make it so painless that using the logging framework would be every easier than the normal methods.

I looked at log4net but my head began hurting within moments. It looked very flexible, but it was just too much work to implement and use. I’m not saying it was insurmountable, but it was more complex than I wanted.

What I ended up using is the .NET Logging Framework from TheObjectGuy. It was very simple to setup, even easier to use. I don’t think it is quite as flexible as log4net, but it does everything I needed (and more). Within minutes I had it logging my application to the Event Log, Email, and outputting a .log file.

The documentation on the other hand was a bit sparse. Nothing too bad, but it could/should be a lot better than it is. And there isn’t a single sample of how to use it (the only sample is a log reader, not something I really care about). It is simple enough however that these two issues don’t really impede very much.